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About the project

As part of the project Katy travelled to retirement homes across for British and Polish people across the UK to meet elderly residents and listen to tales of their war-time experiences, community in the 1940s, and how music and song played a role in their lives.

During this research one man in particular caught her imagination: Kazimierz Piechowski was a Polish veteran who had been imprisoned in Auschwitz as a boy for being a member of the Boy Scouts, but made a daring escape from the camp in 1942.

Inspired by this amazing story and the tales of the many people that she had met, Katy produced a film, ‘Kazik and the Kommander's Car’, which she has screened in various places across the UK and Poland, along with live performances of music that she has written to evoke this period, and popular songs from 1940s Britain and Poland.

As a result of Lottery funding, The Escapologist Tour performances have bought veterans from two nations together, and helped their heritage and reminiscences to live on with hundreds of people from different generations and backgrounds.